The incident strengthens and encourages all manner of war-mongers. The Weekly Standard’s, Thomas Jocelyn, manages to argue that this episode proves that U.S. torture of detainees at Guantanamo (including Yemenis, who have made up the largest group since January 2008) isn’t the “driving force behind AQAP’s terror” but rather “the terrorists’ jihadist ideology, which the Obama administration spends much of its time ignoring.” (So why worry about provoking ordinary Yemenis with drone missile attacks and the abuse of their countrymen when the underlying cause for hatred of the U.S. is Islamist “jihadism” from Afghanistan to Somalia?)

Liz Cheney, deputy secretary of state for Middle Eastern affairs under the Bush/Cheney administration, appeared on Fox News to argue that al-Qaeda was probing “the weakest spot in our system” by targeting cargo planes and that “that’s why intelligence becomes so important. It’s why I believe that the steps that this president has taken, for example, threatening to prosecute intelligence officials, are so dangerous and damaging for the nation. It’s why the Wikileaks, the leaks are so damaging.”

Cognitive dissonance aside, the reportage on this episode has been fraught with contradictions, leaves many unanswered questions, and serves the interests of those bent on perpetuating and expanding wars based on lies and fear.

As official videographer for the U.S. government, Kurt Sonnenfeld was detailed to Ground Zero on September 11, 2001, where he spent one month filming 29 tapes: “What I saw at certain moments and in certain places … is very disturbing!” He never handed them over to the authorities and has been persecuted ever since.

Suddenly BP’s oil disaster is getting an unusually high amount of positive publicity. Media reports are concluding that most of the oil has disappeared. The static kill has been successful at holding back the oil pressure, and the U.S. government issued a scientific report suggesting that 75 percent of the 4.9 million barrels of oil that gushed into the Gulf as been burned, dispersed or evaporated. But even if you assume that all of the dispersed oil has been degraded, there are still an estimated 1.3 million barrels out in the environment — five times the amount of oil released during the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. People observing beaches in southern coastal states of Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Florida say they are still covered with oil and Corexit 9500, the chemical dispersant BP sprayed to break up the oil and remove it from view. Vast areas of ocean that used to be abundant with sea life show little signs of life anywhere. Plastic bags full of dead sea birds and oil are filling landfills in the south. If millions of gallons of oil have evaporated, what are the consequences for the air quality in the Gulf? Residents have reported that in areas normally besieged by mosquitos, there is now little need for repellant. Despite the rosy reports suddenly filling the airways, damage still appears to be ongoing. There is still plenty of oil in the Gulf that cannot, and will not, be cleaned up, and that will continue to wreak damage on the environment and the economies of Gulf states.

Hiring prison labor is more than a way for BP to save money while cleaning up the biggest oil spill in history. By tapping into the inmate workforce, the company and its subcontractors get workers who are not only cheap but easily silenced—and they get lucrative tax write-offs in the process.

From environmentalists and wildlife specialists to fisherman and businessmen along the Gulf Coast the message is the same: BP is not only strangling the news of what is actually occurring in the Gulf of Mexico with the oil disaster but has co-opted key federal regulatory and oversight agencies to advance its agenda and that of its oil partners, including Halliburton, Anadarko, and Transocean…The EPA is also remaining mute on air quality reports from Venice that show that on May 7 hydrogen sulfide in the air was measured at 1192 parts per billion. Five parts per billion is considered hazardous to human health. In addition, the May 7 reports show that benzene levels in the air were measured at 5000 parts per billion, again in the health danger zone. Propylene glycol, a major component in Corexit 9500, is being measured in Gulf waters at 150 times its lethal concentration.

In a dark but little-known chapter of U.S. history, the federal government ordered the poisoning of alcohol supplies to deter and punish those who sought to flout Prohibition-era bans…Historians estimate that a total of 10,000 people were killed by the program before Prohibition ended in 1933.

Shortly after the incident, in September 1951, scientists writing in the highly respected British Medical Journal declared that “the outbreak of poisoning” was produced by ergot mold. This explanation, however, was based almost solely upon the findings of biochemists dispatched to the scene from the nearby Sandoz Chemical Company in Basle, Switzerland. Included in the contingent from Sandoz was Dr. Albert Hofmann, the man who had first synthesized LSD on November 16, 1938. At the time of the Sandoz group’s visit to Pont St. Esprit only a handful of scientists worldwide, estimated to be no more than eight-to-ten, knew of the existence of the man-made drug LSD.

The basic frightening history of MK-ULTRA and examples of its’ dangerous use against humans, including US citizens.

ASSASINATIONS – JFK, RFK, MLK & ARAFAT

Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated 42 years ago in the midst of his campaign for the U.S. presidency. Largely overshadowed by the death of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, the official account of RFK’s tragic end, allegedly shot down by a lone gunman, like his brother, has received vastly less attention. In both instances, we are looking at staged events that fit into a recurrent pattern in U.S. and world history where innocent individuals (or “patsies”) are baited and framed for cover-up purposes. Professor James H. Fetzer, an expert in the scientific study of assassinations, provides a sketch of how we know what happened to them and why, where RFK’s assassination was in part intended to prevent a reinvestigation into his brother’s death.

Acting on his conscience, he carefully took about 60 photos of the top-secret labs and unique production processes involved. When some of these photos were originally published in the London Sunday Times’ exposé, they confirmed his eyewitness testimony about the extent of Israel’s nuclear weapons program and revealed Israel to be one of the world’s top nuclear powers. To this day, the Israeli government refuses international inspection of Dimona and continues to deny the existence of its nuclear arsenal.

The United States stored 12,000 nuclear weapons and components in at least 23 countries and 5 American territories during the cold war — including Morocco, Japan, Iceland, Puerto Rico and Cuba — according to an article based on a recently declassified document.

WORLD WAR II

In Andernach about 50,000 prisoners of all ages were held in an open field surrounded by barbed wire. The women were kept in a separate enclosure that I did not see until later. The men I guarded had no shelter and no blankets. Many had no coats. They slept in the mud, wet and cold, with inadequate slit trenches for excrement. It was a cold, wet spring, and their misery from exposure alone was evident.

Appearing on the Alex Jones Show today, Paul Craig Roberts talked about the shameful abandonment of POWs by the U.S. government. Roberts mentioned an article by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Sydney Schanberg posted on the American Conservative website entitled McCain and the POW Cover-Up.

OTHER

The British government apologized on Thursday to sufferers from the thalidomide scandal, half a century after thousands of babies were born with birth defects after their mothers took the morning sickness pill.

Two big bombs were found INSIDE the Oklahoma City federal building and defused. These clips ran on local news live…and were never broadcast again. There is no way a truck bomb regardless of size could have done the damage that was done to that building.

The government’s story is a complete lie and they know it. The “terrorism expert” and the end of this clip Dr. Randall Heather was never seen on TV again and can’t be found on Google (except in relation to this appearance.) Rather than test the site to assess the exact composition of the bomb material as Dr. Heather and USAF General Partin (ret) recommended, the building was demolished and all the wreckage was removed to a fenced in landfill and buried. No tests were ever done.

It would be “impossible” to reveal secret MI5 files about the 7/7 London terror attacks, a court has been told.

The BBC has released a remarkable film about the killing of three international peace activists by the Israeli army in the occupied Gaza Strip. Documentary evidence provided in the film strongly suggests that the American Rachel Corrie – and two British activists – were murdered. Last spring, within a period of seven weeks, one British and one American peace activist were killed by the Israeli army in Rafah, a Palestinian town at the southern end of the occupied Gaza Strip. A second Briton was shot in the head leaving him brain-dead. In two of the cases the Israeli army is being blamed for murder; the third is considered “attempted murder.”

An Obama executive order that creates a council of state governors who will work with the feds to expand military involvement in domestic security has stoked fears that the administration is stepping up preparations for martial law.

The order, which is entitled Establishment of the Council of Governors (PDF), creates a body of ten state governors directly appointed by Obama who will work with the federal government to help advance the “synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States”.

The governors will liaise with officials from Northcom, Homeland Security, the National Guard as well as DoD officials from the Pentagon “in order to strengthen further the partnership between the Federal Government and State governments,” according to the executive order.

The Obama administration is lowering the volume in a long-running argument between Congress and the executive branch over when, if ever, a president has the power to bypass federal statutes he has signed into law. The administration will consider itself free to disregard new laws it considers unconstitutional, especially in cases where it has previously voiced objections elsewhere, White House officials said. The White House disclosed the shift when asked why it had not put out a signing statement last month, when Obama signed a $447 billion spending bill for 2010 that contained several provisions that restricted executive power in ways that the administration had previously asserted were unconstitutional.

Looks like the steadily growing list of constitutional, ethical and political outrages that constitute the Harry Reid version of Obamacare is sparking a rebellion in the states, as AP reports South Carolina’s attorney general plans to investigate the vote-buying that surrounded the proposal in the Senate majority leader’s office.

According to AP, South Carolina’s Henry McMaster is being joined by the attorneys general of Michigan and Washington state in a suit to determine the constitutionality of the Obamacare proposal. Their initiative was prompted by a request from South Carolina’s two senators, Lindsay Graham and Jim DeMint, both Republicans.

“The alarming upshot of the court’s decision is that so long as the government spies on all Americans, the courts have no power to review or halt such mass surveillance even when it is flatly illegal and unconstitutional,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. “With new revelations of illegal spying being reported practically every other week — just this week, we learned that the FBI has been unlawfully obtaining Americans’ phone records using Post-It notes rather than proper legal process — the need for judicial oversight when it comes to government surveillance has never been clearer.”

Plans for a North America security perimeter might have seemed like a pipe dream just a short time ago, but it could become a reality sooner than one thinks. Some believe that a perimeter approach to security would be a more effective way of providing safety while ensuring the free flow of trade and investment. For those pushing for deep continental integration, this move is seen as the next logical step. A recent article from the Toronto Star, Canada warms to idea of a tougher ‘perimeter’ suggests that Canadians might now be ready to debate the concept of perimeter security. David Biette who specializes in U.S.-Canada relations and is a member of the Woodrow Wilson Center stated that a, “Perimeter is no longer a dirty word.

Roger Tucker considers the linguistic root, visual representation, usage and practise of fascism, and examines the circumstances under which the concept, “which is neither good nor bad in itself”, becomes malevolent. To illustrate, he looks at two contemporary examples of fascism: the USA and Israel.

”Fascism … it is a social pathology and it can legitimately be considered humanity’s most urgent public health problem. If enough people come to understand what the disease is and how to diagnose it, perhaps there will emerge a means to inoculate ourselves. At this point American and Jewish fascism appear to have converged into an aggressive pathological force that endangers humanity more than any such phenomenon in the past.”

Joseph Stiglitz understands half the US economic disaster when he explains current policy is “no way to run an economy that’s going to work,” “there’s moral hazard everywhere,” and newly-invented and unregulated financial markets have only increased risk, not decreased it.

Michael Geist: “Negotiations in the 7th round of the ACTA [ed: The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement — a brutal, secret Internet treaty] talks open this morning in Mexico with civil enforcement issues on the agenda. Yesterday I posted on the developments to-date, including a chronology of talks, issues, and leaks that have led to this week’s round of discussions. Part Two of the ACTA Guide provides links to the underlying documentation. Governments have been very tight lipped about the talks. Initially, only a brief summary following the conclusion of each round of the talks was provided. More recently, the agenda of each meeting is disclosed and a summary document (largely confirming Internet leaks) has been provided. Of far greater importance are the leaked documents. These have confirmed how the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is designed to extend far beyond counterfeiting and how it would reshape domestic law in many countries.”

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is actively issuing directions banning private sales of guns without licenses at gun shows in Texas, despite there being no law to justify such demands.

According to an obscure report in the European Union Times (EUTimes.net), “Russian Military Analysts are reporting to Prime Minister Putin that US President Barack Obama has issued an order to his Northern Command’s (USNORTHCOM) top leader, US Air Force General Gene Renuart, to ‘begin immediately’ increasing his military forces to 1 million troops by January 30, 2010, in what these reports warn is an expected outbreak of civil war within the United States before the end of winter.

In the wake of the Flight 253 provocation, over-hyped terrorism panics, and last year’s Big Pharma and media-engineered hysteria over the H1N1 flu pandemic, President Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13528 on January 11.

Among other things, the Executive Order (EO) established a Council of Governors, an “advisory panel” chosen by the President that will rubber-stamp long-sought-after Pentagon contingency plans to seize control of state National Guard forces in the event of a “national emergency.”

According to the White House press release, the ten member, bipartisan Council was created “to strengthen further the partnership between the Federal Government and State Governments to protect our Nation against all types of hazards.”

“When appointed” the announcement continues, “the Council will be reviewing such matters as involving the National Guard of the various States; homeland defense; civil support; synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States; and other matters of mutual interest pertaining to National Guard, homeland defense, and civil support activities.”

Clearly designed to weaken the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 which bars the use of the military for civilian law enforcement, EO 13528 is the latest in a series of maneuvers by previous administrations to wrest control of armed forces historically under the democratic control of elected state officials, and a modicum of public accountability.